Canadian ISPs Fight Back, Again 200
jenningsthecat writes "With the recent CRTC decision giving Canadian telcos such as Bell and Telus the legal right to deny third-party ISPs access to their infrastructure, smaller Canadian Internet providers are again fighting for their lives, and are asking their customers for help. The ISPs are seeking public support, asking people to go to competitivebroadband.com to send either a form letter or a personalized message to the Industry Minister, the Prime Minister, the Opposition Leader, and optionally the respondent's local Minister of Parliament. If the CRTC's decision is not overturned, approximately 30 ISPs will likely be forced out of business. Competition in the ADSL market will be totally eliminated, and Canadians will have only two choices for wired Internet access: the local Cableco or the local Telco. Given that Canadian taxpayers have heavily subsidized the telcos in multiple ways for several decades, this decision to hand over exclusive control of the keys to the cookie jar hardly seems fair."
Re:Goverment (Score:3, Funny)
Wait... which is the crazy one?
Re:Bigger picture! (Score:1, Funny)
Shaw basically sets up a deal (not sure of the terms) so that they can provide internet access THROUGH telus' wiring.
Nope. Not quite.
Shaw is the cable television company. They provide Internet access over the coax cable that also provides your TV signal.
Telus is the phone company. They provide Internet access over the twisted pair copper wire that also provides your telephone dial tone.
However, there are lots of smaller ISP's that provide DSL connections over the wires "owned" by Telus. For example, I use a (relatively) small ISP called nucleus.com. They provide me with a DSL connection that goes over the Telus wiring infrastructure, much to the chagrin of the money-grubbing phone company.
As you may expect, the tech support you receive from the giant fat-and-lazy phone company is limited to the subvocal grunting of whatever fly-by-night offshore call centre Telus decides to outsource to this week, while the tech support from a smaller (ie local) ISP actually has a clue.